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This thesis provides an insight into the current position of moral rights of authors and
outlines the perspectives of the doctrine of moral rights in international copyright
regime of the 21st century. Such survey is particularly urgent at a time when the
doctrine of droit moral, one of the most contentious and controversial issues in
copyright, is now in an international spotlight again. The recent decade has seen two
contradictory trends in the field of international copyright. The 1994 Uruguay Round
saw the emergence of new global intellectual property regime, embodied in the TRIPs
Agreement, which elevates copyright into a new stage of development by linking it for
the first time with international trade and technology and by substantially widening the
scope of its governance. However, this new instrument is almost exclusively concerned
with protecting the rights belonging to owners, endorsing the 'sanctity of property', but
practically eliminating the protection of the original creators' non-economic, moral
rights. Against this background, the 1990's have witnessed an unprecedented
commitment to the protection of artist's moral rights in countries that in the past were
the strongest opponents of any such notion within their copyright regimes.
The question of moral rights has always been considered an issue where a wider
international consensus is impossible due to the traditional rift between civil law's
authors' rights and common law's copyright philosophies. However, in a world where
the protection of intellectual property is increasingly viewed on an international basis -
of necessity, because of technological and economic developments - a global consensus
on this issue is inevitable. By reviewing the justificatory schemata underlying the
doctrine of droit moral and by analyzing the recent statutory developments in several
common law jurisdictions in this arena, as well as the concession made by moral
rights-devout civilian jurisdictions, this thesis shows that the gap between the two
systems is no longer insurmountable. The analysis reveals that despite the underlying
philosophical differences, a substantial degree of convergence of copyright and author's
rights is occurring, and outlines the sites of consolidation which can serve as a basis for
a possible future international agreement on this issue.

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